HISTORY

For an orthodox Hindu the history of India begins more than three

thousand years before the Christian era with the events detailed in the

great epic of the _Mahabharata_; but by the sober historian these can

only be regarded as legends. See the article INSCRIPTIONS: section

_Indian_, for a discussion of the scientific basis of the early history.

It is needless to repeat here the analysis given in that article. The

following account of the earlier period follows the main outlines of the

traditional facts, corrected as far as possible by the inscriptional

record; and further details will be found in the separate biographical,

racial and linguistic articles, and those on the geographical areas into

which India is administratively divided.

Legends.

Our earliest glimpses of India disclose two races struggling for the

soil, the Dravidians, a dark-skinned race of aborigines, and the Aryans,

a fair-skinned people, descending from the north-western passes.

Ultimately the Dravidians were driven back into the southern table-land,

and the great plains of Hindustan were occupied by the Aryans, who

dominated the history of India for many centuries thereafter.

The _Rig-Veda_ forms the great literary memorial of the early Aryan

settlements in the Punjab. The age of this primitive folk-song is

unknown. The Hindus believe, without evidence, that it existed "from

before all time," or at least 3001 years B.C.--nearly 5000 years ago.

European scholars have inferred from astronomical dates that its

composition was going on about 1400 B.C. But these dates are themselves

given in writings of later origin, and might have been calculated

backwards. We only know that the Vedic religion had been at work long

before the rise of Buddhism in the 6th century B.C. Nevertheless, the

antiquity of the _Rig-Veda_, although not to be expressed in figures, is

abundantly established. The earlier hymns exhibit the Aryans on the

north-western frontiers of India just starting on their long journey.

They show us the Aryans on the banks of the Indus, divided into various

tribes, sometimes at war with each other, sometimes united against the

"black-skinned" aborigines. Caste, in its later sense, is unknown. Each

father of a family is the priest of his own household. The chieftain

acts as father and priest to the tribe; but at the greater festivals he

chooses some one specially learned in holy offerings to conduct the

sacrifice in the name of the people. The chief himself seems to have

been elected. Women enjoyed a high position, and some of the most

beautiful hymns were composed by ladies and queens. Marriage was held

sacred. Husband and wife were both "rulers of the house" (_dampati_),

and drew near to the gods together in prayer. The burning of widows on

their husbands' funeral-pile was unknown, and the verses in the _Veda_

which the Brahmans afterwards distorted into a sanction for the practice

have the very opposite meaning.

The Aryan tribes in the _Veda_ are acquainted with most of the metals.

They have blacksmiths, coppersmiths and goldsmiths among them, besides

carpenters, barbers and other artisans. They fight from chariots, and

freely use the horse, although not yet the elephant, in war. They have

settled down as husbandmen, till their fields with the plough, and live

in villages or towns. But they also cling to their old wandering life,

with their herds and "cattle-pens." Cattle, indeed, still form their

chief wealth, the coin (Lat. _pecunia_) in which payments of fines are

made; and one of their words for war literally means "a desire for

cows." They have learned to build "ships," perhaps large river-boats,

and seem to have heard something of the sea. Unlike the modern Hindus,

the Aryans of the _Veda_ ate beef, used a fermented liquor or beer made

from the _soma_ plant, and offered the same strong meat and drink to

their gods. Thus the stout Aryans spread eastwards through northern

India, pushed on from behind by later arrivals of their own stock, and

driving before them, or reducing to bondage, the earlier "black-skinned"

races. They marched in whole communities from one river-valley to

another, each house-father a warrior, husbandman and priest, with his

wife and his little ones, and cattle.

Early states.

About the beginning of the 6th century B.C. the settled country between

the Himalaya mountains and the Nerbudda river was divided into sixteen

independent states, some monarchies and some tribal republics, the most

important of which were the four monarchies of Kosala, Magadha, the

Vamsas and Avanti. Kosala, the modern kingdom of Oudh, appears to have

been the premier state of India in 600 B.C. Later the supremacy was reft

from it by the kingdom of Magadha, the modern Behar (q.v.). South of

Kosala lay the kingdom of the Vamsas, and south of that again the

kingdom of Avanti. In the north-west was Gandhara, on the banks of the

Indus, in the neighbourhood of Peshawar. The history of these early

states is only a confused record of war and intermarriages, and is still

semi-mythical. The list of the sixteen states ignores everything north

of the Himalayas, south of the Vindhyas, and east of the Ganges where it

turns south.

Capital cities.

The principal cities of India at this date were Ayodhya, the capital of

Kosala at the time of the Ramayana, though it afterwards gave place to

Sravasti, which was one of the six great cities of India in the time of

Buddha: archaeologists differ as to its position. Baranasi, the modern

Benares, had in the time of Megasthenes a circuit of 25 m. Kosambi, the

capital of the Vamsas, lay on the Jumna, 230 m. from Benares. Rajagriha

(Rajgir), the capital of Magadha, was built by Bimbisara, the

contemporary of Buddha. Roruka, the capital of Sovira, was an important

centre of the coasting trade. Saketa was sometime the capital of Kosala.

Ujjayini, the modern Ujjain, was the capital of Avanti. None of these

great cities has as yet been properly excavated.

Social life.

In those early days the Aryan tribes were divided into four social

grades on a basis of colour: the Kshatriyas or nobles, who claimed

descent from the early leaders; the Brahmans or sacrificing priests; the

Vaisyas, the peasantry; and last of all the Sudras, the hewers of wood

and drawers of water, of non-Aryan descent. Even below these there were

low tribes and trades, aboriginal tribes and slaves. In later documents

mention is made of eighteen gilds of work-people, whose names are

nowhere given, but they probably included workers in wood, workers in

metal, workers in stone, weavers, leather-workers, potters,

ivory-workers, dyers, fisher-folk, butchers, hunters, cooks, barbers,

flower-sellers, sailors, basket-makers and painters.

It is supposed that sea-going merchants, mostly Dravidians, and not

Aryans, availing themselves of the monsoons, traded in the 7th century

B.C. from the south-west ports of India to Babylon, and that there they

became acquainted with a Semitic alphabet, which they brought back with

them, and from which all the alphabets now used in India, Burma, Siam

and Ceylon have been gradually evolved. For the early inscriptional

remains, see INSCRIPTIONS: _India_. The earliest written records in

India, however, are Buddhist. The earliest written books are in Pali and

Buddhist Sanskrit.

_The Buddhist Period._

The systems called Jainism (see JAINS) and Buddhism (q.v.) had their

roots in prehistoric philosophies, but were founded respectively by

Vardhamana Mahavira and Gotama Buddha, both of whom were preaching in

Magadha during the reign of Bimbisara (c. 520 B.C.).

During the next two hundred years Buddhism spread over northern India,

perhaps receiving a new impulse from the Greek kingdoms in the Punjab.

About the middle of the 3rd century B.C. Asoka, the king of Magadha or

Behar, who reigned from 264 B.C. to 227 B.C., became a zealous convert

to Buddhism. He is said to have supported 64,000 Buddhist priests; he

founded many religious houses, and his kingdom is called the Land of the

Monasteries (Vihara or Behar) to this day. He did for Buddhism what

Constantine effected for Christianity; he organized it on the basis of a

state religion. This he accomplished by five means--by a council to

settle the faith, by edicts promulgating its principles, by a state

department to watch over its purity, by missionaries to spread its

doctrines, and by an authoritative collection of its sacred books. In

246 B.C. Asoka is said[2] to have convened at Pataliputra (Patna) the

third Buddhist council of one thousand elders (the tradition that he

actually convened it rests on no actual evidence that we possess). Evil

men, taking on them the yellow robe of the order, had given forth their

own opinions as the teaching of Buddha. Such heresies were now

corrected; and the Buddhism of southern Asia practically dates from

Asoka's council. In a number of edicts, both before and after the synod,

he published throughout India the grand principles of the faith. Such

edicts are still found graven deep upon pillars, in caves and on rocks,

from the Yusafzai valley beyond Peshawar on the north-western frontier,

through the heart of Hindustan, to Kathiawar and Mysore on the south and

Orissa in the east. Tradition states that Asoka set up 64,000 memorial

columns; and the thirty-five inscriptions extant in our own day show how

widely these royal sermons were spread over India. In the year of the

council, the king also founded a state department to watch over the

purity and to direct the spread of the faith. A minister of justice and

religion (Dharma Mahamatra) directed its operations; and, one of its

first duties being to proselytize, he was specially charged with the

welfare of the aborigines among whom its missionaries were sent. Asoka

did not think it enough to convert the inferior races without looking

after their material interests. Wells were to be dug and trees planted

along the roads; a system of medical aid was established throughout his

kingdom and the conquered provinces, as far as Ceylon, for both man and

beast. Officers were appointed to watch over domestic life and public

morality, and to promote instruction among the women as well as the

youth.

Asoka recognized proselytism by peaceful means as a state duty. The rock

inscriptions record how he sent forth missionaries "to the utmost limits

of the barbarian countries," to "intermingle among all unbelievers" for

the spread of religion. They shall mix equally with Brahmans and

beggars, with the dreaded and the despised, both within the kingdom

"and in foreign countries, teaching better things." Conversion is to be

effected by persuasion, not by the sword. This character of a

proselytizing faith which wins its victories by peaceful means has

remained a prominent feature of Buddhism to the present day. Asoka,

however, not only took measures to spread the religion; he also

endeavoured to secure its orthodoxy. He collected the body of doctrine

into an authoritative version, in the Magadhi language or dialect of his

central kingdom in Behar--a version which for two thousand years has

formed the canon (_pitakas_) of the southern Buddhists.

The fourth and last of the great councils was held in Kashmir under the

Kushan king Kanishka (see below). This council, which consisted of five

hundred members, compiled three commentaries on the Buddhist faith.

These commentaries supplied in part materials for the Tibetan or

northern canon, drawn up at a subsequent period. The northern canon, or,

as the Chinese proudly call it, the "greater vehicle of the law,"

includes many later corruptions or developments of the Indian faith as

originally embodied by Asoka in the "lesser vehicle," or canon of the

southern Buddhists.

The Kanishka commentaries were written in the Sanskrit language, perhaps

because the Kashmir and northern priests who formed his council belonged

to isolated Aryan colonies, which had been little influenced by the

growth of the Indian vernacular dialects. In this way Kanishka and his

Kashmir council became in some degree to the northern or Tibetan

Buddhists what Asoka and his council had been to the Buddhists of Ceylon

and the south.[3]

Buddhism and Brahmanism.

Buddhism never ousted Brahmanism from any large part of India. The two

systems co-existed as popular religions during more than a thousand

years (250 B.C. to about A.D. 800), and modern Hinduism is the joint

product of both. Certain kings and certain eras were intensely

Buddhistic; but the continuous existence of Brahmanism is abundantly

proved from the time of Alexander (327 B.C.) downwards. The historians

who chronicled his march, and the Greek ambassador Megasthenes, who

succeeded them (300 B.C.) in their literary labours, bear witness to the

predominance of the old faith in the period immediately preceding Asoka.

Inscriptions, local legends, Sanskrit literature, and the drama disclose

the survival of Brahman influence during the next six centuries (250

B.C.-A.D. 400). From A.D. 400 we have the evidence of the Chinese

pilgrims, who toiled through Central Asia into India as the birthplace

of their faith. Fa-Hien entered India from Afghanistan, and journeyed

down the whole Gangetic valley to the Bay of Bengal in A.D. 399-413. He

found Brahman priests equally honoured with Buddhist monks, and temples

to the Indian gods side by side with the religious houses of his own

faith. Hsüan Tsang also travelled to India from China by the Central

Asia route, and has left a fuller record of the state of the two

religions in the 7th century. His journey extended from A.D. 629 to 645,

and everywhere throughout India he found the two faiths eagerly

competing for the suffrages of the people. By that time, indeed,

Brahmanism was beginning to assert itself at the expense of the other

religion. The monuments of the great Buddhist monarchs, Asoka and

Kanishka, confronted him from the time he neared the Punjab frontier;

but so also did the temples of Siva and his "dread" queen Bhima.

Throughout north-western India he found Buddhist convents and monks

surrounded by "swarms of heretics." The political power was also

divided, although Buddhist sovereigns predominated. A Buddhist monarch

ruled over ten kingdoms in Afghanistan. At Peshawar the great monastery

built by Kanishka was deserted, but the populace remained faithful. In

Kashmir king and people were devout Buddhists, under the teaching of

five hundred monasteries and five thousand monks. In the country

identified with Jaipur, on the other hand, the inhabitants were devoted

to heresy and war.

Decline of Buddhism.

During the next few centuries Brahmanism gradually became the ruling

religion. There are legends of persecutions instigated by Brahman

reformers, such as Kumarila Bhatta and Sankar-Acharjya. But the downfall

of Buddhism seems to have resulted from natural decay, and from new

movements of religious thought, rather than from any general suppression

by the sword. Its extinction is contemporaneous with the rise of

Hinduism, and belongs to a subsequent part of this sketch. In the 11th

century, only outlying states, such as Kashmir and Orissa, remained

faithful; and before the Mahommedans fairly came upon the scene Buddhism

as a popular faith had disappeared from India. During the last ten

centuries Buddhism has been a banished religion from its native home.

But it has won greater triumphs in its exile than it could ever have

achieved in the land of its birth. It has created a literature and a

religion for more than a third of the human race, and has profoundly

affected the beliefs of the rest. Five hundred millions of men, or 35%

of the inhabitants of the world, still follow the teaching of Buddha.

Afghanistan, Nepal, Eastern Turkestan, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria,

China, Japan, the Eastern Archipelago, Siam, Burma, Ceylon and India at

one time marked the magnificent circumference of its conquests. Its

shrines and monasteries stretched in a continuous line from the Caspian

to the Pacific, and still extend from the confines of the Russian empire

to the equatorial archipelago. During twenty-four centuries Buddhism has

encountered and outlived a series of powerful rivals. At this day it

forms one of the three great religions of the world, and is more

numerously followed than either Christianity or Islam. In India its

influence has survived its separate existence: it supplied a basis upon

which Brahmanism finally developed from the creed of a caste into the

religion of the people. The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are

to be found, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the

people; in that principle of the brotherhood of man, with the

reassertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum

which the great Hindu sects afford to women who have fallen victims to

caste rules, to the widow and the out-caste; in the gentleness and

charity to all men, which takes the place of a poor-law in India, and

gives a high significance to the half satirical epithet of the "mild"

Hindu.

_Hindu Period._

The external history of India may be considered to begin with the Greek

invasion in 327 B.C. Some indirect trade between India and the Levant

seems to have existed from very ancient times. Homer was acquainted with

tin and other articles of Indian merchandise by their Sanskrit names;

and a long list has been made of Indian products mentioned in the Bible.

In the time of Darius (see PERSIA) the valley of the Indus was a Persian

satrapy. But the first Greek historian who speaks clearly of India was

Hecataeus of Miletus (549-486 B.C.); the knowledge of Herodotus (450

B.C.) ended at the Indus; and Ctesias, the physician (401 B.C.), brought

back from his residence in Persia only a few facts about the products of

India, its dyes and fabrics, its monkeys and parrots. India to the east

of the Indus was first made known in Europe by the historians and men of

science who accompanied Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. Their

narratives, although now lost, are condensed in Strabo, Pliny and

Arrian. Soon afterwards Megasthenes, as Greek ambassador resident at a

court in Bengal (306-298 B.C.), had opportunities for the closest

observation. The knowledge of the Greeks and Romans concerning India

practically dates from his researches, 300 B.C.

Alexander's march.

Alexander the Great entered India early in 327 B.C. Crossing the lofty

Khawak and Kaoshan passes of the Hindu Kush, he advanced by Alexandria,

a city previously founded in the Koh-i-Daman, and Nicaea, another city

to the west of Jalalabad, on the road from Kabul to India. Thence he

turned eastwards through the Kunar valley and Bajour, and crossed the

Gouraios (Panjkora) river. Here he laid siege to Mount Aornos, which is

identified by some authorities with the modern Mahaban, though this

identification was rejected by Dr Stein after an exhaustive survey of

Mount Mahaban in 1904. Alexander crossed the Indus at Ohind, 16 m. above

Attock, receiving there the submission of the great city of Taxila,

which is now represented by miles of ruins near the modern Rawalpindi.

Crossing the Hydaspes (Jhelum) he defeated Porus in a great battle, and

crossing the Acesines (Chenab) near the foot of the hills and the

Hydraotes (Ravi), reached the Hyphasis (Beas). Here he was obliged by

the temper of his army to retrace his steps, and retreat to the Jhelum,

whence he sailed down the river to its confluence with the Indus, and

thence to Patala, probably the modern Hyderabad. From Patala the admiral

Nearchos was to sail round the coast to the Euphrates, while Alexander

himself marched through the wilds of Gedrosia, or modern Makran.

Ultimately, after suffering agonies of thirst in the desert, the army

made its way back to the coast at the modern harbour of Pasin, whence

the return to Susa in Persia was comparatively easy.

During his two years' campaign in the Punjab and Sind, Alexander

captured no province, but he made alliances, founded cities and planted

garrisons. He had transferred much territory to chiefs and confederacies

devoted to his cause; every petty court had its Greek faction; and the

detachments which he left behind at various positions, from the Afghan

frontier to the Beas, and from near the base of the Himalaya to the Sind

delta, were visible pledges of his return. At Taxila (Dehri-Shahan) and

Nicaea (Mong) in the northern Punjab, at Alexandria (Uchch) in the

southern Punjab, at Patala (Hyderabad) in Sind, and at other points

along his route, he established military settlements of Greeks or

allies. A large body of his troops remained in Bactria; and, in the

partition of the empire which followed Alexander's death in 323 B.C.,

Bactria and India eventually fell to Seleucus Nicator, the founder of

the Syrian monarchy (see SELEUCID).

Chandragupta Maurya.

Meanwhile a new power had arisen in India. Among the Indian adventurers

who thronged Alexander's camp in the Punjab, each with his plot for

winning a kingdom or crushing a rival, Chandragupta Maurya, an exile

from the Gangetic valley, seems to have played a somewhat ignominious

part. He tried to tempt the wearied Greeks on the banks of the Beas with

schemes of conquest in the rich south-eastern provinces; but, having

personally offended their leader, he had to fly the camp (326 B.C.). In

the confused years which followed, he managed with the aid of plundering

bands to form a kingdom on the ruins of the Nanda dynasty in Magadha or

Behar (321 B.C.). He seized the capital, Pataliputra, the modern Patna,

established himself firmly in the Gangetic valley, and compelled the

north-western principalities, Greeks and natives alike, to acknowledge

his suzerainty. While, therefore, Seleucus was winning his way to the

Syrian monarchy during the eleven years which followed Alexander's

death, Chandragupta was building up an empire in northern India.

Seleucus reigned in Syria from 312 to 280 B.C., Chandragupta in the

Gangetic valley from 321 to 296 B.C. In 312 B.C. the power of both had

been consolidated, and the two new sovereignties were brought face to

face. In that year Seleucus, having recovered Babylon, proceeded to

re-establish his authority in Bactria (q.v.) and the Punjab. In the

latter province he found the Greek influence decayed. Alexander had left

behind a mixed force of Greeks and Indians at Taxila. No sooner was he

gone than the Indians rose and slew the Greek governor; the Macedonians

massacred the Indians; a new governor, sent by Alexander, murdered the

friendly Punjab prince, Porus, and was himself driven out of the country

by the advance of Chandragupta from the Gangetic valley. Seleucus, after

a war with Chandragupta, determined to ally himself with the new power

in India rather than to oppose it. In return for five hundred elephants,

he ceded the Greek settlements in the Punjab and the Kabul valley, gave

his daughter to Chandragupta in marriage, and stationed an ambassador,

Megasthenes, at the Gangetic court (302 B.C.). Chandragupta became

familiar to the Greeks as Sandrocottus, king of the Prasii; his

capital, Pataliputra was called by them Palimbothra. On the other hand,

the names of Greeks and kings of Grecian dynasties appear in the rock

inscriptions, under Indian forms.

Previous to the time of Megasthenes the Greek idea of India was a very

vague one. Their historians spoke of two classes of Indians--certain

mountainous tribes who dwelt in northern Afghanistan under the

Caucasus or Hindu Kush, and a maritime race living on the coast of

Baluchistan. Of the India of modern geography lying beyond the Indus

they practically knew nothing. It was this India to the east of the

Indus that Megasthenes opened up to the western world. He describes

the classification of the people, dividing them, however, into seven

castes instead of four, namely, philosophers, husbandmen, shepherds,

artisans, soldiers, inspectors and the counsellors of the king. The

philosophers were the Brahmans, and the prescribed stages of their

life are indicated. Megasthenes draws a distinction between the

Brahmans ([Greek: Brachmanes]) and the Sarmanae ([Greek: Sarmanai]),

from which some scholars have inferred that the Buddhist Sarmanas were

a recognized class fifty years before the council of Asoka. But the

Sarmanae also include Brahmans in the first and third stages of their

life as students and forest recluses. The inspectors or sixth class of

Megasthenes have been identified with Asoka's _Mahamatra_ and his

Buddhist inspectors of morals.

The Greek ambassador observed with admiration the absence of slavery

in India, the chastity of the women, and the courage of the men. In

valour they excelled all other Asiatics; they required no locks to

their doors; above all, no Indian was ever known to tell a lie. Sober

and industrious, good farmers and skilful artisans, they scarcely ever

had recourse to a lawsuit, and lived peaceably under their native

chiefs. The kingly government is portrayed almost as described in

Manu, with its hereditary castes of councillors and soldiers.

Megasthenes mentions that India was divided into one hundred and

eighteen kingdoms; some of which, such as that of the Prasii under

Chandragupta, exercised suzerain powers. The village system is well

described, each little rural unit seeming to be an independent

republic. Megasthenes remarked the exemption of the husbandmen

(Vaisyas) from war and public services, and enumerates the dyes,

fibres, fabrics and products (animal, vegetable and mineral) of India.

Husbandry depended on the periodical rains; and forecasts of the

weather, with a view to "make adequate provision against a coming

deficiency," formed a special duty of the Brahmans. "The philosopher

who errs in his predictions observes silence for the rest of his

life."

Before the year 300 B.C. two powerful monarchies had thus begun to act

upon the Brahmanism of northern India, from the east and from the west.

On the east, in the Gangetic valley, Chandragupta (320-296 B.C.) firmly

consolidated the dynasty which during the next century produced Asoka

(264-228 or 227 B.C.), and established Buddhism throughout India. On the

west, the Seleucids diffused Greek influences, and sent forth

Graeco-Bactrian expeditions to the Punjab. Antiochus Theos (grandson of

Seleucus Nicator) and Asoka (grandson of Chandragupta), who ruled these

two monarchies in the 3rd century B.C., made a treaty with each other

(256). In the next century Eucratides, king of Bactria, conquered as far

as Alexander's royal city of Patala, and possibly sent expeditions into

Cutch and Gujarat, 181-161 B.C. Of the Graeco-Indian monarchs, Menander

(q.v.) advanced farthest into north-western India, and his coins are

found from Kabul, near which he probably had his capital, as far as

Muttra on the Jumna.[4] The Buddhist dynasty of Chandragupta profoundly

modified the religion of northern India from the east; the Seleucid

empire, with its Bactrian and later offshoots, deeply influenced the

science and art of Hindustan from the west.

Greek influence on art.

Brahman astronomy owed much to the Greeks, and what the Buddhists were

to the architecture of northern India, that the Greeks were to its

sculpture. Greek faces and profiles constantly occur in ancient Buddhist

statuary, and enrich almost all the larger museums in India. The purest

specimens have been found in the North-west frontier province (the

ancient Gandhara) and the Punjab, where the Greeks settled in greatest

force. As we proceed eastward from the Punjab, the Greek type begins to

fade. Purity of outline gives place to lusciousness of form. In the

female figures, the artists trust more and more to swelling breasts and

towering chignons, and load the neck with constantly accumulating

jewels. Nevertheless, the Grecian type of countenance long survived in

Indian art. It is entirely unlike the present coarse conventional ideal

of sculptured beauty, and may even be traced in the delicate profiles on

the so-called sun temple at Kanarak, built in the 12th century A.D. on

the remote Orissa shore.

The Maurya Dynasty.

Chandragupta (q.v.) was one of the greatest of Indian kings. The

dominions that he had won back from the Greeks he administered with

equal power. He maintained an army of 600,000 infantry, 30,000 horsemen,

36,000 men with the elephants, and 24,000 men with the chariots, which

was controlled by an elaborate war-office system. The account given of

his reign by Megasthenes makes him better known to us than any other

Indian monarch down to the time of Akbar. In 297 B.C. he was succeeded

by his son, Bindusara, who is supposed to have extended his dominions

down to Madras. In 272 B.C. he in turn was succeeded by Asoka, the

Buddhist emperor, the religious side of whose reign has already been

described. Asoka's empire included the greater part of Afghanistan, a

large part of Baluchistan, Sind, Kashmir, Nepal, Bengal to the mouths of

the Ganges, and peninsular India down to the Palar river. After Asoka

the Mauryas dwindled away, and the last of them, Brihadratha, was

treacherously assassinated in 184 B.C. by his commander-in-chief,

Pushyamitra Sunga, who founded the Sunga dynasty.

Sunga, Kanva, and Andhra Dynasties.

During the 2nd century B.C. north-western India was invaded and

partially conquered by Antiochus III. the Great, Demetrius (q.v.),

Eucratides (q.v.) and Menander (q.v.). With the last of these

Pushyamitra Sunga waged successful war, driving him from the Gangetic

valley and confining him to his conquests in the west. Pushyamitra

established his own paramountcy over northern India; but his reign is

mainly memorable as marking the beginning of the Brahmanical reaction

against Buddhism, a reaction which Pushyamitra is said to have forwarded

not only by the peaceful revival of Hindu rites but by a savage

persecution of the Buddhist monks. The Sunga dynasty, after lasting 112

years, was succeeded by the Kanva dynasty, which lasted 45 years, i.e.

until about 27 B.C., when it was overthrown by an unknown king of the

Andhra dynasty of the Satavahanas, whose power, originating in the

deltas of the Godavari and Kistna rivers, by A.D. 200 had spread across

India to Nasik and gradually pushed its way northwards.

The Saka Satraps.

About A.D. 100 there appeared in the west three foreign tribes from the

north, who conquered the native population and established themselves in

Malwa, Gujarat and Kathiawar. These tribes were the Sakas, a horde of

pastoral nomads from Central Asia (see SAKA), the Pahlavas, whose name

is supposed to be a corruption of "Parthiva" (i.e. Parthians of Persia),

and the Yavanas (Ionians), i.e. foreigners from the old Indo-Greek

kingdoms of the north west frontier, all of whom had been driven

southwards by the Yue-chi (q.v.). Their rulers, of whom the first to be

mentioned is Bhumaka, of the Kshaharata family, took the Persian title

of satrap (Kshatrapa). They were hated by the Hindus as barbarians who

disregarded the caste system and despised the holy law, and for

centuries an intermittent struggle continued between the satraps and the

Andhras, with varying fortune. Finally, however, about A.D. 236, the

Andhra dynasty, after an existence of some 460 years, came to an end,

under circumstances of which no record remains, and their place in

western India was taken by the Kshaharata satraps, until the last of

them was overthrown by Chandragupta Vikramaditya at the close of the 4th

century.

The Kushan Dynasty A.D. 45-225.

Meanwhile, the Yue-chi had themselves crossed the Hindu Kush to the

invasion of north-western India (see YUE-CHI). They were originally

divided into five tribes, which were united under the rule of Kadphises

I.[5] (? A.D. 45-85), the founder of the Kushan dynasty, who conquered

the Kabul valley, annihilating what remained there of the Greek

dominion, and swept away the petty Indo-Greek and Indo-Parthian

principalities on the Indus. His successors completed the conquest of

north-western India from the delta of the Indus eastwards probably as

far as Benares. One effect of the Yue-chi conquests was to open up a

channel of commerce with the Roman empire by the northern trade routes;

and the Indian embassy which, according to Dion. Cassius (ix. 58),

visited Trajan after his arrival at Rome in A.D. 99, was probably[6]

sent by Kadphises II. (Ooemokadphises) to announce his conquest of

north-western India. The most celebrated of the Kushan kings, however,

was Kanishka, whose date is still a matter of controversy.[7] From his

capital at Purushapura (Peshawar) he not only maintained his hold on

north-western India, but conquered Kashmir, attacked Pataliputra,

carried on a successful war with the Parthians, and led an army across

the appalling passes of the Taghdumbash Pamir to the conquest of

Kashgar, Yarkand and Khotan. It is not, however, as a conqueror that

Kanishka mainly lives on in tradition, but as a Buddhist monarch, second

in reputation only to Asoka, and as the convener of the celebrated

council of Kashmir already mentioned.

The dynasties of the Andhras in the centre and south and of the Kushans

in the north came to an end almost at the same time (c. A.D. 236-225

respectively). The history of India during the remainder of the 3rd

century is all but a blank, a confused record of meaningless names and

disconnected events; and it Is not until the opening of the 4th century

that the veil is lifted, with the rise to supreme power in Magadha (A.D.

320) of Chandragupta I., the founder of the Gupta dynasty and empire

(see GUPTA), the most extensive since the days of Asoka. He was

succeeded by Chandragupta II. Vikramaditya, whose court and

administration are described by the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hien, and who is

supposed to have been the original of the mythical king Vikramaditya,

who figures largely in Indian legends. The later Guptas were overwhelmed

(c. 470) by the White Huns, or Ephthalites (q.v.), who after breaking

the power of Persia and assailing the Kushan kingdom of Kabul, had

poured into India, conquered Sind, and established their rule as far

south as the Nerbudda. The dominion of the Huns in India, as elsewhere,

was a mere organization for brigandage on an imperial scale and it did

not long survive. It was shaken (c. 528) by the defeat, at the hands of

tributary princes goaded to desperation, of Mihiragula, the most

powerful and bloodthirsty of its rulers--the "Attila of India." It

collapsed with the overthrow of the central power of the White Huns on

the Oxus (c. 565) by the Turks. Though, however, this stopped the

incursions of Asiatic hordes from the north-west, and India was to

remain almost exempt from foreign invasion for some 500 years, the

Ephthalite conquest added new and permanent elements to the Indian

population. After the fall of the central power, the scattered Hunnish

settlers, like so many before them, became rapidly Hinduized, and are

probably the ancestors of some of the most famous Rajput clans.[8]

The last native monarch, prior to the Mahommedan conquest, to establish

and maintain paramount power in the north was Harsha, or Harshavardhana

(also known as Siladitya), for whose reign (606-648) full and

trustworthy materials exist in the book of travels written by the

Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang and the _Harsha-charita_ (Deeds of Harsha)

composed by Bana, a Brahman who lived at the royal court. Harsha was the

younger son of the raja of Thanesar, and gained his first experience of

campaigning while still a boy in the successful wars waged by his

father and brother against the Huns on the north-western frontier. After

the treacherous murder of his brother by Sasanka, king of Central

Bengal, he was confirmed as raja, though still very young, by the nobles

of Thanesar in 606, though it would appear that his effective rule did

not begin till six years later.[9] His first care was to revenge his

brother's death, and though it seems that Sasanka escaped destruction

for a while (he was still ruling in 619), Harsha's experience of warfare

encouraged him to make preparations for bringing all India under his

sway. By the end of five and a half years he had actually conquered the

north-western regions and also, probably, part of Bengal. After this he

reigned for 34½ years, devoting most of his energy to perfecting the

administration of his vast dominions, which he did with such wisdom and

liberality as to earn the commendation of Hsüan Tsang. In his campaigns

he was almost uniformly successful; but in his attempt to conquer the

Deccan he was repulsed (620) by the Chalukya king, Pulikesin II., who

successfully prevented him from forcing the passes of the Nerbudda.

Towards the end of his reign Harsha's empire embraced the whole basin of

the Ganges from the Himalayas to the Nerbudda, including Nepal,[10]

besides Malwa, Gujarat and Surashtra (Kathiawar); while even Assam

(Kamarupa) was tributary to him. The empire, however, died with its

founder. His benevolent despotism had healed the wounds inflicted by the

barbarian invaders, and given to his subjects a false feeling of

security. For he left no heir to carry on his work; his death "loosened

the bonds which restrained the disruptive forces always ready to operate

in India, and allowed them to produce their normal result, a medley of

petty states, with ever-varying boundaries, and engaged in unceasing

internecine war."[11]

The Deccan.

In the Deccan the middle of the 6th century saw the rise of the Chalukya

dynasty, founded by Pulikesin I. about A.D. 550. The most famous monarch

of this line was Pulikesin II., who repelled the inroads of Harsha (A.D.

620), and whose court was visited by Hsüan Tsang (A.D. 640); but in A.D.

642 he was defeated by the Pallavas of Conjeeveram, and though his son

Vikramaditya I. restored the fallen fortunes of his family, the

Chalukyas were finally superseded by the Rashtrakutas about A.D. 750.

The Kailas temple at Ellora was built in the reign of Krishna I. (c.

A.D. 760). The last of the Rashtrakutas was overthrown in A.D. 973 by

Taila II., a scion of the old Chalukya stock, who founded a second

dynasty known as the Chalukyas of Kalyani, which lasted like its

predecessor for about two centuries and a quarter. About A.D. 1000 the

Chalukya kingdom suffered severely from the invasion of the Chola king,

Rajaraja the Great. Vikramanka, the hero of Bilhana's historical poem,

came to the throne in A.D. 1076 and reigned for fifty years. After his

death the Chalukya power declined. During the 12th and 13th centuries a

family called Hoysala attained considerable prominence in the Mysore

country, but they were overthrown by Malik Kafur in A.D. 1310. The

Yadava kings of Deogiri were descendants of feudatory nobles of the

Chalukya kingdom, but they, like the Hoysalas, were overthrown by Malik

Kafur, and Ramachandra, the last of the line, was the last independent

Hindu sovereign of the Deccan.

The Kingdoms of the South.

According to ancient tradition the kingdoms of the south were

three--Pandya, Chola and Chera. Pandya occupied the extremity of the

peninsula, south of Pudukottai, Chola extended northwards to Nellore,

and Chera lay to the west, including Malabar, and is identified with the

Kerala of Asoka. All three kingdoms were occupied by races speaking

Dravidian languages. The authentic history of the south does not begin

until the 9th and 10th centuries A.D., though the kingdoms are known to

have existed in Asoka's time.

The Pandya Kingdom.

The most ancient mention of the name Pandya occurs in the 4th century

B.C., and in Asoka's time the kingdom was independent, but no early

records survive, the Inscriptions of the dynasty being of late date,

while the long lists of kings in Tamil literature are untrustworthy.

During the early centuries of the Christian era the Pandya and Chera

kingdoms traded with Rome. The most ancient Pandya king to whom a

definite date can be ascribed is Rajasimha (c. A.D. 920). Records begin

towards the end of the 12th century, and the dynasty can be traced from

then till the middle of the 16th century. The most conspicuous event in

its history was the invasion by the Sinhalese armies of Parakramabahu,

king of Ceylon (c. A.D. 1175). The early records of the Chera kingdom

are still more meagre; and the authentic list of the rajas of Travancore

does not begin till A.D. 1335, and the rajas of Cochin two centuries

later.

The Chola Kingdom.

The Chola kingdom, like the Pandya, is mentioned by the Sanskrit

grammarian Katyayana in the 4th century B.C., and was recognized by

Asoka as independent. The dynastic history of the Cholas begins about

A.D. 860, and is known from then until its decline in the middle of the

13th century. During those four centuries their history is intertwined

with that of the Pallavas, Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas and other minor

dynasties. In A.D. 640 the Chola country was visited by Hsüan Tsang, but

the country at that time was desolate, and the dynasty of small

importance. In A.D. 985 Rajaraja the Great came to the throne, and after

a reign of twenty-seven years died the paramount ruler of southern

India. He conquered and annexed the island of Ceylon, and was succeeded

by four equally vigorous members of the dynasty; but after the time of

Vikrama (A.D. 1120) the Chola power gradually declined, and was

practically extinguished by Malik Kafur.

The Pallava Confederacy.

The name of the Pallavas appears to be identical with that of the

Pahlavas, a foreign tribe, frequently mentioned in inscriptions and

Sanskrit literature. It is supposed, therefore, that the Pallavas came

from the north, and gradually worked their way down to Malabar and the

Coromandel coast. When first heard of in the 2nd century A.D. they are a

ruling race. The Pallavas appear, like the Mahrattas in later times, to

have imposed tribute on the territorial governments of the country. The

first Pallava king about whom anything substantial is known was

Siva-skanda-varman (c. A.D. 150), whose capital was Kanchi

(Conjeeveram), his power extending into the Telugu country as far as the

Kistna river. Two centuries later Samudragupta conquered eleven kings of

the south, of whom three were Pallavas. It appears that in the 4th

century three Pallava chiefs were established at Kanchi, Vengi and

Palakkada, the latter two being subordinate to the first, and that

Pallava rule extended from the Godavari on the north to the Southern

Vellaru river on the south, and stretched across Mysore from sea to sea.

About A.D. 609 Pulikesin II., the Chalukya king, defeated

Mahendra-Varman, a Pallava chief, and drove him to take refuge behind

the walls of Kanchi. About A.D. 620 a prince named Vishnuvardhana

founded the Eastern Chalukya line in the province of Vengi, which was

taken from the Pallavas. Hsüan Tsang visited Kanchi, the Pallava

capital, in the year A.D. 640; the country was, according to his

account, 1000 m. in circumference, and the capital was a large city 5 or

6 m. in circumference. In A.D. 642 the Pallavas defeated in turn

Pulikesin II. The conflict became perennial, and when the Rashtrakutas

supplanted the Chalukyas in the middle of the 8th century, they took up

the old quarrel with the Pallavas. Towards the end of the 10th century

the Pallava power, which had lasted for ten centuries, was destroyed by

the Chola monarch, Rajaraja the Great. Pallava nobles existed to the end

of the 17th century, and the raja of Pudukottai claims descent from the

ancient royal family.

_Mahommedan Period._

At the time that Buddhism was being crushed out of India by the

Brahmanic reaction, a new faith was being born in Arabia, destined to

supply a youthful fanaticism which should sweep the country from the

Himalayas to Cape Comorin, and from the western to the eastern sea.

Mahomet, the founder of Islam, died at Medina in A.D. 632, while the

Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang was still on his travels. The first

Mahommedan invasion of India is placed in 664, only thirty-two years

after the death of the prophet. The Punjab is said to have been ravaged

on this occasion with no permanent results. The first Mahommedan

conquest was the outlying province of Sind. In 711, or seventy-nine

years after the death of Mahomet, an Arab army under Mahommed b. Kasim

invaded and conquered the Hindus of Sind in the name of Walid I., caliph

of Damascus, of the Omayyad line. In the same year Roderic, the last of

the Goths, fell before the victorious Saracens in Spain. But in India

the bravery of the Rajputs and the devotion of the Brahmans seem to have

afforded a stronger national bulwark than existed in western Europe. In

750 the Hindus rose in rebellion and drove out the Mussulman tyrant, and

the land had rest for one hundred and fifty years.

Mahmud of Ghazni.

The next Mahommedan invasion of India is associated with the name of

Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni. Mahmud was the eldest son of Sabuktagin,

surnamed Nasr-ud-din, in origin a Turkish slave, who had established his

rule over the greater part of modern Afghanistan and Khorassan, with

Ghazni as his capital. In 977 Sabuktagin is said to have defeated

Jaipal, the Hindu raja of Lahore, and to have rendered the Punjab

tributary. But his son Mahmud was the first of the great Mussulman

conquerors whose names still ring through Asia. Mahmud succeeded to the

throne in 997. During his reign of thirty-three years he extended the

limits of his father's kingdom from Persia on the east to the Ganges on

the west; and it is related that he led his armies into the plains of

India no fewer than seventeen times. In 1001 he defeated Raja Jaipal a

second time, and took him prisoner. But Anandpal, son of Jaipal, raised

again the standard of national independence, and gathered an army of

Rajput allies from the farthest corners of Hindustan. The decisive

battle was fought in the valley of Peshawar. Mahmud won the day by the

aid of his Turkish horsemen, and thenceforth the Punjab has been a

Mahommedan province, except during the brief period of Sikh supremacy.

The most famous of Mahmud's invasions of India was that undertaken in

1025-1026 against Gujarat. The goal of this expedition was the temple

dedicated to Siva at Somnath, around which so many legends have

gathered. It is reported that Mahmud marched through Ajmere to avoid the

desert of Sind; that he found the Hindus gathered on the neck of the

peninsula of Somnath in defence of their holy city; that the battle

lasted for two days; that in the end the Rajput warriors fled to their

boats, while the Brahman priests retired into the inmost shrine; that

Mahmud, introduced into this shrine, rejected all entreaties by the

Brahmans to spare their idol, and all offers of ransom; that he smote

the image with his club, and forthwith a fountain of precious stones

gushed out. Until the British invasion of Afghanistan in 1839, the club

of Mahmud and the wood gates of Somnath were preserved at the tomb of

the great conqueror near Ghazni. The club has now disappeared, and the

gates brought back to India by Lord Ellenborough are recognized to be a

clumsy forgery. To Mahommedans Mahmud is known, not only as a champion

of the faith, but as a munificent patron of literature. The dynasty that

he founded was not long-lived. Fourteen of his descendants occupied his

throne within little more than a century, but none of them achieved

greatness. A blood-feud arose between them and a line of Afghan princes

who had established themselves among the mountains of Ghor. In 1155

Bahram, the last of the Ghaznivide Turks, was overthrown by Ala-ud-din

of Ghor, and the wealthy and populous city of Ghazni was razed to the

ground. But even the Ghoride conqueror spared the tomb of Mahmud.

Khusru, the son of Bahram, fled to Lahore, and there established the

first Mahommedan dynasty within India. It speedily ended with his son,

also called Khusru, whom Mahommed Ghori, the relentless enemy of the

Ghaznivide house, carried away into captivity in 1186.

The Afghans of Ghor thus rose to power on the downfall of the Turks of

Ghazni. The founder of the family is said to have been Izzud-din al

Husain, whose son Ala-ud-din destroyed Ghazni, as already mentioned.

Ala-ud-din had two nephews, Ghiyas-ud-din and Muiz-ud-din, the latter of

whom, also called Shahab-ud-din by Mussulman chroniclers, and generally

known in history as Mahommed Ghori, is the second of the great

Mahommedan conquerors of India. In 1175 he took Multan and Uchch; in

1186 Lahore fell into his hands; in 1191 he was repulsed before Delhi,

but soon afterwards he redeemed this disaster. Hindustan proper was at

that period divided between the two Rajput kingdoms of Kanauj and Delhi.

Mahommed Ghori achieved his object by playing off the rival kings

against each other. By 1193 he had extended his conquests as far east as

Benares, and the defeated Rajputs migrated in a body to the hills and

deserts now known as Rajputana. In 1199 one of his lieutenants, named

Bakhtiyar, advanced into Bengal, and expelled by an audacious stratagem

the last Hindu raja of Nadia. The entire northern plain, from the Indus

to the Brahmaputra, thus lay under the Mahommedan yoke. But Mahommed

Ghori never settled permanently in India. His favourite residence is

said to have been the old capital of Ghazni, while he governed his

Indian conquests through the agency of a favourite slave, Kutb-ud-din.

Mahommed Ghori died in 1206, being assassinated by some Ghakkar

tribesmen while sleeping in his tent by the bank of the Indus; on his

death both Ghor and Ghazni drop out of history, and Delhi first appears

as the Mahommedan capital of India.

The Slave Dynasty.

On the death of Mahommed Ghori, Kutb-ud-din at once laid aside the title

of viceroy, and proclaimed himself sultan of Delhi. He was the founder

of what is known as the slave dynasty, which lasted for nearly a century

(1206-1288). The name of Kutb is preserved in the minar, or pillar of

victory, which still stands amid the ruins of ancient Delhi, towering

high above all later structures. Kutb himself is said to have been

successful as a general and an administrator, but none of his successors

has left a mark in history.

Ala-ud-din.

In 1294 Ala-ud-din Khilji, the third of the great Mahommedan conquerors

of India, raised himself to the throne of Delhi by the treacherous

assassination of his uncle Feroz II. who had himself supplanted the last

of the slave dynasty. Ala-ud-din had already won military renown by his

expeditions into the yet unsubdued south. He had plundered the temples

at Bhilsa in central India, which are admired to the present day as the

most interesting examples of Buddhist architecture in the country. At

the head of a small band of horsemen, he had ridden as far south as

Deogiri (Daulatabad) in the Deccan (q.v.), and plundered the Yadava

capital. When once established as sultan, he planned more extensive

schemes of conquest. One army was sent to Gujarat under Alaf Khan, who

conquered and expelled the last Rajput king of Anhalwar or Patan.

Another army, led by the sultan in person, marched into the heart of

Rajputana, and stormed the rock-fortress of Chitor, where the Rajputs

had taken refuge with their women and children. A third army, commanded

by Malik Kafur, a Hindu renegade and favourite of Ala-ud-din, penetrated

to the extreme south of the peninsula, scattering the unwarlike

Dravidian races, and stripping every Hindu temple of its accumulations

of gold and jewels. To this day the name of Malik Kafur is remembered in

the remote district of Madura, in association with irresistible fate and

every form of sacrilege.

Mahommed b. Tughlak.

Ala-ud-din died In 1316, having subjected to Islam the Deccan and

Gujarat. Three successors followed him upon the throne, but their united

reigns extended over only five years. In 1321 a successful revolt was

headed by Ghiyas-ud-din Tughlak, governor of the Punjab, who is said to

have been of Turkish origin. The Tughlak dynasty lasted for about

seventy years, until it was swept away by the invasion of Timur, the

fourth Mahommedan conqueror of India, in 1398. Tughlak's son and

successor, Mahommed b. Tughlak, who reigned from 1325 to 1351, is

described by Elphinstone as "one of the most accomplished princes and

one of the most furious tyrants that ever adorned or disgraced human

nature." He wasted the treasure accumulated by Ala-ud-din in purchasing

the retirement of the Mogul hordes, who had already made their

appearance in the Punjab. When the internal circulation failed, he

issued a forced currency of copper, which is said to have deranged the

whole commerce of the country. At one time he raised an army for the

invasion of Persia. At another he actually despatched an expedition

against China, which perished miserably in the Himalayan passes. When

Hindustan was thus suffering from his misgovernment, he conceived the

project of transferring the seat of empire to the Deccan, and compelled

the inhabitants of Delhi to remove a distance of 700 m. to Deogiri or

Daulatabad. And yet during the reign of this sultan both the Tughlak

dynasty and the city of Delhi are said to have attained their utmost

growth. Mahommed was succeeded by his cousin Feroz, who likewise was not

content without a new capital, which he placed a few miles north of

Delhi, and called after his own name. He was a kind-hearted and popular,

but weak, ruler. Meanwhile the remote provinces of the empire began to

throw off their allegiance to the sultans of Delhi. The independence of

the Afghan kings of Bengal is generally dated from 1336, when Mahommed

Tughlak was yet on the throne. The commencement of the reign of

Ala-ud-din, the founder of the Bahmani dynasty in the Deccan, is

assigned to 1347. Zafar Khan, the first of the Ahmedabad kings, acted as

an independent ruler from the time of his first appointment as governor

of Gujarat in 1391. These and other revolts prepared the way for the

fourth great invasion of India under Timur (Tamerlane).

Timur's invasion.

Accordingly, when Timur invaded India in 1398, he encountered but little

organized resistance. Mahmud, the last of the Tughlak dynasty, being

defeated in a battle outside the walls of Delhi, fled into Gujarat. The

city was sacked and the inhabitants massacred by the victorious Moguls.

But the invasion of Timur left no permanent impress upon the history of

India, except in so far as its memory fired the imagination of Baber,

the founder of the Mogul dynasty. The details of the fighting and of the

atrocities may be found related in cold blood by Timur himself in the

_Malfuzat-i-Timuri_, which has been translated in Elliot's _History of

India as told by its own Historians_, vol. iii. Timur marched back to

Samarkand as he had come, by way of Kabul, and Mahmud Tughlak ventured

to return to his desolate capital. He was succeeded by what is known as

the Sayyid dynasty, which held Delhi and a few miles of surrounding

country for about forty years. The Sayyids were in their turn expelled

by Bahlol, an Afghan of the Lodi tribe, whose successors removed the

seat of government to Agra, which thus for the first time became the

imperial city. In 1526 Baber, the fifth in descent from Timur, and also

the fifth Mahommedan conqueror, invaded India at the instigation of the

governor of the Punjab, won the victory of Panipat over Ibrahim, the

last of the Lodi dynasty, and founded the Mogul empire, which lasted, at

least in name, until 1857.

Vijayanagar.

In southern India at this time authentic history begins with the Hindu

empire of Vijayanagar, which exercised an ill-defined sovereignty over

the entire south from the 14th to the 16th century. The empire of

Vijayanagar represents the last stand made by the national faith in

India against conquering Islam. For at least two centuries its sway over

the south was undisputed, and its rajas waged wars and concluded

treaties of peace with the sultans of the Deccan on equal terms.

Bahmani Dynasty.

The earliest of the Mahommedan dynasties in the Deccan was that founded

by Ala-ud-din in 1347, which has received the name of the Bahmani

dynasty. The capital was first at Gulbarga, and was afterwards removed

to Bidar, both which places still possess magnificent palaces and

mosques in ruins. Towards the close of the 14th century the Bahmani

empire fell to pieces, and five independent kingdoms divided the Deccan

among them. These were--(1) the Adil Shahi dynasty, with its capital at

Bijapur, founded in 1490 by a Turk; (2) the Kutb Shahi dynasty, with

its capital at Golconda, founded in 1512 by a Turkoman adventurer; (3)

the Nizam Shahi dynasty, with its capital at Ahmednagar, founded in 1490

by a Brahman renegade; (4) the Imad Shahi dynasty of Berar, with its

capital at Ellichpur, founded in 1484 also by a Hindu from Vijayanagar;

(5) the Barid Shahi dynasty, with its capital at Bidar, founded about

1492 by one who is variously described as a Turk and a Georgian slave.

It is, of course, impossible here to trace in detail the history of

these several dynasties. In 1565 they combined against the Hindu raja of

Vijayanagar, who was defeated and slain in the decisive battle of

Talikota. But, though the city was sacked and the supremacy of

Vijayanagar for ever destroyed, the Mahommedan victors did not

themselves advance far into the south. The Naiks or feudatories of

Vijayanagar everywhere asserted their independence. From them are

descended the well-known Palegars of the south, and also the present

raja of Mysore. One of the blood-royal of Vijayanagar fled to

Chandragiri, and founded a line which exercised a prerogative of its

former sovereignty by granting the site of Madras to the English in

1639. Another scion claiming the same high descent lingers to the

present day near the ruins of Vijayanagar, and is known as the raja of

Anagundi, a feudatory of the nizam of Hyderabad. Despite frequent

internal strife, the sultans of the Deccan retained their independence

until conquered by the Mogul emperor Aurangzeb in the latter half of the

17th century. To complete this sketch of India at the time of Baber's

invasion it remains to say that an independent Mahommedan dynasty

reigned at Ahmedabad in Gujarat for nearly two centuries (from 1391 to

1573), until conquered by Akbar; and that Bengal was similarly

independent, under a line of Afghan kings, with Gaur for their capital,

from 1336 to 1573.

The Mogul Dynasty.

When, therefore, Baber invaded India in 1525, the greater part of the

country was Mahommedan, but it did not recognize the authority of the

Afghan sultan of the Lodi dynasty, who resided at Agra, and also ruled

the historical capital of Delhi. After having won the battle of Panipat

(1526) Baber was no more acknowledged as emperor of India than his

ancestor Timur had been. Baber, however, unlike Timur, had resolved to

settle in the plains of Hindustan, and carve out for himself a new

empire with the help of his Mogul followers. His first task was to repel

an attack by the Rajputs of Chitor, who seem to have attempted to

re-establish at this time a Hindu empire. The battle was fought at Sikri

near Agra, and is memorable for the vow made by the easy-living Baber

that he would never again touch wine. Baber was again victorious, but

died shortly afterwards in 1530. He was succeeded by his son Humayun,

who is chiefly known as being the father of Akbar. In Humayun's reign

the subject Afghans rose in revolt under Sher Shah, a native of Bengal,

who for a short time established his authority over all Hindustan.

Humayun was driven as an exile into Persia; and, while he was flying

through the desert of Sind, his son Akbar was born to him in the petty

fortress of Umarkot. But Sher Shah was killed at the storming of the

rock-fortress of Kalinjar, and Humayun, after many vicissitudes,

succeeded in re-establishing his authority at Lahore and Delhi.

Akbar.

Humayun died by an accident in 1556, leaving but a circumscribed

kingdom, surrounded on every side by active foes, to his son Akbar, then

a boy of only fourteen years. Akbar the Great, the real founder of the

Mogul empire as it existed for two centuries, was the contemporary of

Queen Elizabeth of England. He was born in 1542, and his reign lasted

from 1556 to 1605. When his father died he was absent in the Punjab,

fighting the revolted Afghans, under the guardianship of Bairam Khan, a

native of Badakshan, whose military skill largely contributed to recover

the throne for the Mogul line. For the first seven years of his reign

Akbar was perpetually engaged in warfare. His first task was to

establish his authority in the Punjab, and in the country around Delhi

and Agra. In 1567 he stormed the Rajput stronghold of Chitor, and

conquered Ajmere. In 1570 he obtained possession of Oudh and Gwalior,

In 1572 he marched in person into Gujarat, defeated the last of the

independent sultans of Ahmedabad, and formed the province into a Mogul

viceroyalty or subah. In the same year his generals drove out the

Afghans from Bengal, and reunited the lower valley of the Ganges to

Hindustan. Akbar was then the undisputed ruler of a larger portion of

India than had ever before acknowledged the sway of one man. But he

continued to extend his conquests throughout his lifetime. In 1578

Orissa was annexed to Bengal by his Hindu general Todar Mall, who

forthwith organized a revenue survey of the whole province. Kabul

submitted in 1581, Kashmir in 1587, Sind in 1592, and Kandahar in 1594.

At last he turned his arms against the Mahommedan kings of the Deccan,

and wrested from them Berar; but the permanent conquest of the south was

reserved for Aurangzeb.

If the history of Akbar were confined to this long list of conquests,

his name would on their account alone find a high place among those

which mankind delights to remember. But it is as a civil administrator

that his reputation is cherished in India to the present day. With

regard to the land revenue, the essence of his procedure was to fix the

amount which the cultivators should pay at one-third of the gross

produce, leaving it to their option to pay in money or in kind. The

total land revenue received by Akbar amounted to about 16½ millions

sterling. Comparing the area of his empire with the corresponding area

now under the British, it has been calculated that Akbar, three hundred

years ago, obtained 15½ millions where they obtain only 13½ millions--an

amount representing not more than one-half the purchasing power of

Akbar's 15½ millions. The distinction between _khalsa_ land, or the

imperial demesne, and _jagir_ lands, granted revenue free or at quit

rent in reward for services, also dates from the time of Akbar. As

regards his military system, Akbar invented a sort of feudal

organization, by which every tributary raja took his place by the side

of his own Mogul nobles. In theory it was an aristocracy based only upon

military command; but practically it accomplished the object at which it

aimed by incorporating the hereditary chiefships of Rajputana among the

mushroom creations of a Mahommedan despotism. Mussulmans and Hindus were

alike known only as _mansabdars_ or commanders of so many horse, the

highest title being that of _amir_, of which the plural is _umrah_ or

_omrah_. The third and last of Akbar's characteristic measures were

those connected with religious innovation, about which it is difficult

to speak with precision. The necessity of conciliating the proud

warriors of Rajputana had taught him toleration from his earliest days.

His favourite wife was a Rajput princess, and another wife is said to

have been a Christian. Out of four hundred and fifteen of his

_mansabdars_ whose names are recorded, as many as fifty-one were Hindus.

Starting from the broad ground of general toleration, Akbar was

gradually led on by the stimulus of cosmopolitan discussion to question

the truth of his inherited faith. The counsels of his friend Abul Fazl,

coinciding with that sense of superhuman omnipotence which is bred of

despotic power, led him at last to promulgate a new state religion,

based upon natural theology, and comprising the best practices of all

known creeds. In this strange faith Akbar himself was the prophet, or

rather the head of the church. Every morning he worshipped the sun in

public, as being the representative of the divine soul that animates the

universe, while he was himself worshipped by the ignorant multitude.

Akbar died in 1605, in his sixty-third year. He lies buried beneath a

plain slab in the magnificent mausoleum which he had reared at Sikandra,

near his capital of Agra. As his name is still cherished in India, so

his tomb is still honoured, being covered by a cloth presented by Lord

Northbrook when viceroy in 1873.

Jahangir.

The reign of Jahangir, his son, extended from 1605 to 1627. It is

chiefly remarkable for the influence exercised over the emperor by his

favourite wife, surnamed Nur Jahan. The currency was struck in her name,

and in her hands centred all the intrigues that made up the work of

administration. She lies buried by the side of her husband at Lahore,

whither the seat of government had been moved by Jahangir, just as

Akbar had previously transferred it from Delhi to Agra. It was in the

reign of Jahangir that the English first established themselves at

Surat, and also sent their first embassy to the Mogul court.

Shah Jahan.

Jahangir was succeeded by his son Shah Jahan, who had rebelled against

his father, as Jahangir had rebelled against Akbar. Shah Jahan's reign

is generally regarded as the period when the Mogul empire attained its

greatest magnificence, though not its greatest extent of territory. He

founded the existing city of Delhi, which is still known to its

Mahommedan inhabitants as Shahjahanabad. At Delhi also he erected the

celebrated peacock throne; but his favourite place of residence was

Agra, where his name will ever be associated with the marvel of Indian

architecture, the Taj Mahal. That most chaste and most ornamental of

buildings was erected by Shah Jahan as the mausoleum of his favourite

wife Mumtäz Mahal, and he himself lies by her side (see AGRA). Shah

Jahan had four sons, whose fratricidal wars for the succession during

their father's lifetime it would be tedious to dwell upon. Suffice it to

say that Aurangzeb, by mingled treachery and violence, supplanted or

overthrew his brothers and proclaimed himself emperor in 1658, while

Shah Jahan was yet alive.

Aurangzeb.

Aurangzeb's long reign, from 1658 to 1707, may be regarded as

representing both the culminating point of Mogul power and the beginning

of its decay. Unattractive as his character was, it contained at least

some elements of greatness. None of his successors on the throne was any

thing higher than a debauchee or a puppet. He was the first to conquer

the independent sultans of the Deccan, and to extend his authority to

the extreme south. But even during his lifetime two new Hindu

nationalities were being formed in the Mahrattas and the Sikhs; while

immediately after his death the nawabs of the Deccan, of Oudh, and of

Bengal raised themselves to practical independence. Aurangzeb had indeed

enlarged the empire, but he had not strengthened its foundations. During

the reign of his father Shah Jahan he had been viceroy of the Deccan or

rather of the northern portion only, which had been annexed to the Mogul

empire since the reign of Akbar. His early ambition was to conquer the

Mahommedan kings of Bijapur and Golconda, who, since the downfall of

Vijayanagar, had been practically supreme over the south.

Rise of Mahratta power.

This object was not accomplished without many tedious campaigns, in

which Sivaji, the founder of the Mahratta confederacy, first comes upon

the scene. In name Sivaji was a feudatory of the house of Bijapur, on

whose behalf he held the rock-forts of his native Ghats; but in fact he

found his opportunity in playing off the Mahommedan powers against one

another, and in rivalling Aurangzeb himself in the art of treachery. In

1680 Sivaji died, and his son and successor, Sambhaji, was betrayed to

Aurangzeb and put to death. The rising Mahratta power was thus for a

time checked, and the Mogul armies were set free to operate in the

eastern Deccan. In 1686 the city of Bijapur was taken by Aurangzeb in

person, and in the following year Golconda also fell. No independent

power then remained in the south, though the numerous local chieftains,

known as _palegars_ and _naiks_, never formally submitted to the Mogul

empire. During the early years of his reign Aurangzeb had fixed his

capital at Delhi, while he kept his dethroned father, Shah Jahan, in

close confinement at Agra. In 1682 he set out with his army on his

victorious march into the Deccan, and from that time until his death in

1707 he never again returned to Delhi. In this camp life Aurangzeb may

be taken as representative of one aspect of the Mogul rule, which has

been picturesquely described by European travellers of that day. They

agree in depicting the emperor as a peripatetic sovereign, and the

empire as held together by its military highways no less than by the

strength of its armies. The Grand Trunk road running across the north of

the peninsula, is generally attributed to the Afghan usurper, Sher Shah.

The other roads branching out southward from Agra, to Surat and

Burhanpur and Golconda, were undoubtedly the work of Mogul times. Each

of these roads was laid out with avenues of trees, with wells of water,

and with frequent _saráis_ or rest-houses. Constant communication

between the capital and remote cities was maintained by a system of

foot-runners, whose aggregate speed is said to have surpassed that of a

horse. Commerce was conducted by means of a caste of bullock-drivers,

whose occupation in India is hardly yet extinct.

Decline of Mogul Empire.

On the death of Aurangzeb in 1707, the decline of the Mogul empire set

in with extraordinary rapidity. Ten emperors after Aurangzeb are

enumerated in the chronicles, but none of them has left any mark on

history. His son and successor was Bahadur Shah, who reigned only five

years. Then followed in order three sons of Bahadur Shah, whose united

reigns occupy only five years more. In 1739 Nadir Shah of Persia, the

sixth and last of the great Mahommedan conquerors of India, swept like a

whirlwind over Hindustan, and sacked the imperial city of Delhi.

Thenceforth the Great Mogul became a mere name, though the hereditary

succession continued unbroken down to the time of the Mutiny. Real power

had passed into the hands of Mahommedan courtiers and Mahratta generals,

both of whom were then carving for themselves kingdoms out of the

dismembered empire, until at last British authority placed itself

supreme over all. From the time of Aurangzeb no Mussulman, however

powerful, dared to assume the title of sultan or emperor, with the

single exception of Tippoo's brief paroxysm of madness. The name of

_nawáb_, corrupted by Europeans into "nabob," appears to be an invention

of the Moguls to express delegated authority, and as such it is the

highest title conferred upon Mahommedans at the present day, as

_maharaja_ is the highest title conferred upon Hindus. At first nawabs

were only found in important cities, such as Surat and Dacca, with the

special function of administering civil justice; criminal justice was in

the hands of the _kotwál_. The corresponding officials at that time in a

large tract of country were the _subahdar_ and the _faujdar_. But the

title of subahdar, or viceroy, gradually dropped into desuetude, as the

paramount power was shaken off, and nawab became a territorial title

with some distinguishing adjunct. During the troubled period of intrigue

and assassination that followed on the death of Aurangzeb, two

Mahommedan foreigners rose to high position as courtiers and generals,

and succeeded in transmitting their power to their sons. The one was

Chin Kulich Khan, also called Asaf Jah, and still more commonly

Nizam-ul-Mulk, who was of Turkoman origin, and belonged to the Sunni

sect. His independence at Hyderabad in the Deccan dates from 1712. The

other was Saadat Ali Khan, a Persian, and therefore a Shiah, who was

appointed subahdar or nawab of Oudh about 1720. Thenceforth these two

important provinces paid no more tribute to Delhi, though their

hereditary rulers continued to seek formal recognition from the emperor

on their succession. The Mahrattas were in possession of the entire west

and great part of the centre of the peninsula; while the rich and

unwarlike province of Bengal, though governed by an hereditary line of

nawabs founded by Murshid Kuli Khan in 1704, still continued to pour its

wealth into the imperial treasury. The central authority never recovered

from the invasion of Nadir Shah in 1739, who carried off plunder

variously estimated at from 8 to 30 millions sterling. The Mahrattas

closed round Delhi from the south, and the Afghans from the west. The

victory of Panipat, won by Ahmad Shah Durani over the united Mahratta

confederacy in 1761, gave the Mahommedans one more chance of rule. But

Ahmad Shah had no ambition to found a dynasty of his own, nor were the

British in Bengal yet ready for territorial conquest.

End of Mogul line.

Shah Alam, the lineal heir of the Mogul line, was thus permitted to

ascend the throne of Delhi, where he lived during the great part of a

long life as a puppet in the hands of Mahadji Sindhia. He was succeeded

by Akbar II., who lived similarly under the shadow of British

protection. Last of all came Bahadur Shah, who atoned for his

association with the mutineers in 1857 by banishment to Burma. Thus

ended the Mogul line, after a history which covers three hundred and

thirty years. Mahommedan rule remodelled the revenue system, and has

left behind fifty millions of Mussulmans in British India.

_Early European Settlements._

Mahommedan invaders have always entered India from the north-west. Her

new conquerors approached from the sea and from the south. From the time

of Alexander to that of Vasco da Gama, Europe had enjoyed little direct

intercourse with the East. An occasional traveller brought back stories

of powerful kingdoms and of untold wealth; but the passage by sea was

unthought of, and by land many wide deserts and warlike tribes lay

between. Commerce, indeed, never ceased entirely, being carried on

chiefly by the Italian cities on the Mediterranean, which traded to the

ports of the Levant. But to the Europeans of the 15th century India was

practically an unknown land, which powerfully attracted the imagination

of spirits stimulated by the Renaissance and ardent for discovery. In

1492 Christopher Columbus set sail under the Spanish flag to seek India

beyond the Atlantic, bearing with him a letter to the great khan of

Tartary. The expedition under Vasco da Gama started from Lisbon five

years later, and, doubling the Cape of Good Hope, cast anchor off the

city of Calicut on the 20th of May 1498, after a prolonged voyage of

nearly eleven months. From the first da Gama encountered hostility from

the "Moors," or rather Arabs, who monopolized the sea-borne trade; but

he seems to have found favour with the zamorin, or Hindu raja of

Malabar. It may be worth while to recall the contemporary condition of

India at that epoch. An Afghan of the Lodi dynasty was on the throne of

Delhi, and another Afghan king was ruling over Bengal. Ahmedabad in

Gujarat, Gulbarga, Bijapur, Ahmednagar and Ellichpur in the Deccan were

each the capital of an independent Mahommedan kingdom; while the Hindu

raja of Vijayanagar was recognized as paramount over the entire south.

Neither Mogul nor Mahratta had yet appeared above the political horizon.

Portuguese expeditions.

After staying nearly six months on the Malabar coast, da Gama returned

to Europe by the same route as he had come, bearing with him the

following letter from the zamorin to the king of Portugal: "Vasco da

Gama, a nobleman of your household, has visited my kingdom and has given

me great pleasure. In my kingdom there is abundance of cinnamon, cloves,

ginger, pepper, and precious stones. What I seek from thy country is

gold, silver, coral, and scarlet." The arrival of da Gama at Lisbon was

celebrated with national rejoicings scarcely less enthusiastic than had

greeted the return of Columbus. If the West Indies belonged to Spain by

priority of discovery, Portugal might claim the East Indies by the same

right. Territorial ambition combined with the spirit of proselytism and

with the greed of commerce to fill all Portuguese minds with the dream

of a mighty Oriental empire. The early Portuguese discoverers were not

traders or private adventurers, but admirals with a royal commission to

conquer territory and promote the spread of Christianity. A second

expedition, consisting of thirteen ships and twelve hundred soldiers,

under the command of Cabral, was despatched in 1500. "The sum of his

instructions was to begin with preaching, and, if that failed, to

proceed to the sharp determination of the sword." On his outward voyage

Cabral was driven by stress of weather to the coast of Brazil.

Ultimately he reached Calicut, and established factories both there and

at Cochin, in the face of active hostility from the natives. In 1502 the

king of Portugal obtained from Pope Alexander VI. a bull constituting

him "lord of the navigation, conquest, and trade of Ethiopia, Arabia,

Persia, and India." In that year Vasco da Gama sailed again to the East,

with a fleet numbering twenty vessels. He formed an alliance with the

rajas of Cochin and Cannanore against the zamorin of Calicut, and

bombarded the latter in his palace. In 1503 the great Alfonso

d'Albuquerque is first heard of, as in command of one of three

expeditions from Portugal. In 1505 a large fleet of twenty sail and

fifteen hundred men was sent under Francisco de Almeida, the first

Portuguese viceroy of India. In 1509 Albuquerque succeeded as governor,

and widely extended the area of Portuguese influence. Having failed in

an attack upon Calicut, he seized Goa, which from 1530 became the

capital of Portuguese India. Then, sailing round Ceylon, he captured

Malacca, the key of the navigation of the Indian archipelago, and opened

a trade with Siam and the Spice Islands (Moluccas). Lastly, he sailed

back westwards, and, after penetrating into the Red Sea, and building a

fortress at Ormuz in the Persian Gulf, returned to Goa only to die in

1515. In 1524 Vasco da Gama came out to the East for the third time, and

he too died at Cochin.

For exactly a century, from 1500 to 1600, the Portuguese enjoyed a

monopoly of Oriental trade.

Decline of the Portuguese.

Their three objects were conquest, commerce and conversion, and for all

three their position on the Malabar coast strip was remarkably well

adapted. Shut off by the line of the Ghats from Mahommedan India of that

day, they were able to dominate the petty chiefs of Malabar, who

welcomed maritime commerce, and allowed religious freedom in their

domains. Their trade relations with Vijayanagar were very close, when

that great empire was at the height of its power; but in 1564

Vijayanagar went down before the five Mahommedan states of southern

India on the field of Talikota, and with its fall began the decline of

Portugal. During the whole of the 16th century the Portuguese disputed

with the Mahommedans the supremacy of the Indian seas, and the

antagonism between Christianity and Islam became gradually more intense,

until the Portuguese power assumed a purely religious aspect. In 1560

the Inquisition with all its horrors was introduced into Goa. But

Portugal was too small a country to keep up the struggle for long. The

drain of men told upon her vitality, their quality deteriorated, and

their bigotry and intolerance raised even a fiercer opposition to them

within the bounds of India; and as the Dutch and British came into

prominence the Portuguese gradually faded away. In 1603 and 1639 the

Dutch blockaded Goa; during the first half of the 17th century they

routed the Portuguese everywhere in India, Ceylon and Java. Similarly in

1611 the British defeated them off Cambay and in 1615 won a great

victory at Swally. After the middle of the 17th century the Asiatic

trade of Portugal practically disappeared, and now only Goa, Daman and

Diu are left to her as relics of her former greatness.

Dutch settlements.

The Dutch were the first European nation to break through the Portuguese

monopoly. During the 16th century Bruges, Antwerp and Amsterdam became

the great emporia whence Indian produce, imported by the Portuguese, was

distributed to Germany and even to England. At first the Dutch,

following in the track of the English, attempted to find their way to

India by sailing round the north coasts of Europe and Asia. William

Barents is honourably known as the leader of three of these arctic

expeditions, in the last of which he perished. The first Dutchman to

double the Cape of Good Hope was Cornelius Houtman, who reached Sumatra

and Bantam in 1596. Forthwith private companies for trade with the East

were formed in many parts of the United Provinces, but in 1602 they were

all amalgamated by the states-general into "The United East India

Company of the Netherlands." Within a few years the Dutch had

established factories on the continent of India, in Ceylon, in Sumatra,

on the Persian Gulf and on the Red Sea, besides having obtained

exclusive possession of the Moluccas. In 1618 they laid the foundation

of the city of Batavia in Java, to be the seat of the supreme government

of the Dutch possessions in the East Indies. At about the same time they

discovered the coast of Australia, and in North America founded the city

of New Amsterdam or Manhattan, now New York. During the 17th century the

Dutch maritime power was the first in the world. The massacre of Amboyna

in 1623 led the English East India Company to retire from the Eastern

seas to the continent of India, and thus, though indirectly, contributed

to the foundation of the British Indian empire. The long naval wars and

bloody battles between the English and the Dutch within the narrow seas

were not terminated until William of Orange united the two crowns in

1689. In the far East the Dutch ruled without a rival, and gradually

expelled the Portuguese from almost all their territorial possessions.

In 1635 they occupied Formosa; in 1641 they took Malacca, a blow from

which the Portuguese never recovered; in 1652 they founded a colony at

the Cape of Good Hope, as a half-way station to the East; in 1658 they

captured Jaffna, the last stronghold of the Portuguese in Ceylon; by

1664 they had wrested from the Portuguese all their earlier settlements

on the pepper-bearing coast of Malabar.

Decline of the Dutch.

The rapid and signal downfall of the Dutch colonial empire is to be

explained by its short-sighted commercial policy. It was deliberately

based upon a monopoly of the trade in spices, and remained from first to

last destitute of the true imperial spirit. Like the Phoenicians of old,

the Dutch stopped short of no acts of cruelty towards their rivals in

commerce; but, unlike the Phoenicians, they failed to introduce a

respect for their own higher civilization among the natives with whom

they came in contact. The knell of Dutch supremacy was sounded by Clive,

when in 1758 he attacked the Dutch at Chinsura both by land and water,

and forced them to an ignominious capitulation. In the great French war

from 1781 to 1811 England wrested from Holland every one of her

colonies, though Java was restored in 1816 and Sumatra in exchange for

Malacca in 1824. At the present time the Dutch flag flies nowhere on the

mainland of India, though the quaint houses and regular canals at

Chinsura, Negapatam, Jaffna, and many petty ports on the Coromandel and

Malabar coasts remind the traveller of familiar scenes in the

Netherlands.

British expeditions.

The earliest English attempts to reach the East were the expeditions

under John Cabot in 1497 and 1498. Their objective was not so much India

as Japan (Cipangu), of which they only knew vaguely as a land of spices

and silks, and which they hoped to reach by sailing westward. They

failed, but discovered Newfoundland, and sailed along the coast of

America from Labrador to Virginia. In 1553 the ill-fated Sir Hugh

Willoughby attempted to force a passage along the north of Europe and

Asia. Sir Hugh himself perished miserably, but his second in command,

Chancellor, reached a harbour on the White Sea, now Archangel. Thence he

penetrated by land to the court of the grand-duke of Moscow, and laid

the foundation of the Russia Company for carrying on the overland trade

with India through Persia, Bokhara and Moscow. Many subsequent attempts

were made at the North-West Passage from 1576 to 1616, which have left

on our modern maps the imperishable names of Frobisher, Davis, Hudson

and Baffin. Meanwhile, in 1577, Sir Francis Drake had circumnavigated

the globe, and on his way home had touched at Ternate, one of the

Moluccas, the king of which island agreed to supply the English nation

with all the cloves it produced. The first Englishman who actually

visited India was Thomas Stephens in 1579. He had been educated at

Winchester, and became rector of the Jesuits' College in Goa. His

letters to his father are said to have roused great enthusiasm in

England to trade directly with India. In 1583 four English merchants,

Ralph Fitch, John Newbery, William Leedes and James Story, went out to

India overland as mercantile adventurers. The jealous Portuguese threw

them into prison at Ormuz, and again at Goa. At length Story settled

down as a shopkeeper at Goa, Leedes entered the service of the Great

Mogul, Newbery died on his way home overland, and Fitch, after a

lengthened peregrination in Bengal, Pegu, Siam and other parts of the

East Indies, returned to England.

East India Company.

The defeat of the "Invincible Armada" in 1588, at which time the crowns

of Spain and Portugal were united, gave a fresh stimulus to maritime

enterprise in England; and the successful voyage of Cornelius Houtman in

1596 showed the way round the Cape of Good Hope into waters hitherto

monopolized by the Portuguese. The "Governor and Company of Merchants of

London trading into the East Indies" was founded by Queen Elizabeth on

the 31st of December 1600, and the first expedition of four ships under

James Lancaster left Torbay towards the end of April 1601, and reached

Achin in Sumatra on the 5th of June 1602, returning with a cargo of

spices. Between 1600 and 1612 there were twelve separate voyages, but in

the latter year a joint-stock system began involving continual

communication with the Indies. At first the trade was mainly with the

Indian archipelago, but soon the English began to feel their way towards

the mainland of India itself. In 1608 Captain Hawkins visited Jahangir

at Agra, and obtained permission to build a factory at Surat, which was

subsequently revoked, and in 1609 some English merchants obtained an

unstable footing at Surat. Wherever the English went they were met by

the hostility of the Portuguese; and on the 29th of November 1612 the

Portuguese admiral with four ships attempted to capture the English

vessels under Captain Best at Swally, off the mouth of the Tapti river;

but the Portuguese were severely defeated, to the great astonishment of

the natives, and that action formed the beginning of British maritime

supremacy in Indian seas. The first fruits of the victory were the

foundation of a factory at Surat and at other places round the Gulf of

Cambay and in the interior. From the imperial firman of December 1612

dates the British settlement on the mainland of India. At this point

begins the Indian history of the company, for the domestic history of

which see EAST INDIA COMPANY.

Rivalry with Portugal.

The ten years that elapsed between the battle of Swally in 1612 and the

British capture of Ormuz in 1622 sufficed to decide the issue in the

struggle for supremacy between the British and the Portuguese. The

latter, unwillingly linked to the dying power of Spain, were already

decadent, and on the 20th of January 1615 a great Portuguese armada,

consisting of six great galleons, three smaller ships, two galleys and

sixty rowed barges, was defeated for the second time in Swally roads by

Captain Nicholas Downton, in command of four British vessels. In 1618

the English opened trade between Surat and Jask in the Persian Gulf, and

in 1620 gained a victory over the Portuguese fleet there. Early in 1622

the English fleet gained a second decisive victory, and captured Ormuz,

the pearl of the Portuguese possessions in Asia. From this date onwards

India and the Persian Gulf lay open to the English as far as Portugal

was concerned, and before Portugal broke loose from Spain in 1640 her

supremacy in Asiatic seas was hopelessly lost. In 1642 she partially and

in 1654 finally accepted the situation, and opened all her Eastern

possessions to English trade.

Rivalry with the Dutch.

The struggle with the young and growing power of Holland was destined to

be a much more serious affair than that with the exhausted power of

Portugal. The Dutch had just emerged victorious from the struggle with

Spain, and were pulsing with national life. In 1602 the Dutch routed the

Portuguese near Bantam, and opened the road to the Spice Islands. In

1603 they threatened Goa, in 1619 they fixed their capital at Batavia,

in 1638 they drove the Portuguese from Ceylon and in 1641 from Malacca.

When Portugal emerged in 1640 from her sixty years' captivity to Spain,

she found that her power in the Eastern seas had passed to the Dutch,

and thenceforward the struggle lay between the Dutch and the English.

The Dutch were already too strongly entrenched in the Indian archipelago

for English competition to avail there, and the intense rivalry between

the two nations led to the tragedy of Amboyna in 1623, when Governor Van

Speult put to torture and death nine Englishmen on a charge of

conspiring to take the Dutch forts. This outrage was not avenged until

the time of Cromwell (1654), and in the meantime the English abandoned

the struggle for the Spice Islands, and turned their attention entirely

to the mainland of India. In 1616 the Dutch began to compete with the

English at Surat, and their piracies against native vessels led to the

Mogul governor seizing English warehouses; but soon the native

authorities learnt to discriminate between the different European

nations, and the unscrupulous methods of the Dutch cast them into

disfavour.

Madras settlements.

In 1611 Captain Hippon in the seventh separate voyage essayed a landing

at Pulicat, but was driven off by the Dutch, who were already settled

there, and sailed farther up the coast to Pettapoli, where he founded

the first English settlement in the Bay of Bengal, which finally

perished through pestilence in 1687. Captain Hippon, however, also

touched at Masulipatam, the chief sea-port of the kings of Golconda. In

1628 the Dutch won over the native governor there, and the English were

compelled to retreat to Armagon, where they built the first English fort

in India. In 1639 Francis Day, the chief at Armagon, founded Madras,

building Fort St George (1640), and transferring thither the chief

factory from Masulipatam. Here the English obtained their first grant of

Indian soil, apart from the plots on which their factories were built.

In 1653 Madras was raised to an independent presidency, and in 1658 all

the settlements in Bengal and on the Coromandel coast were made

subordinate to Fort St George.

Bengal settlements.

In 1633 eight Englishmen from Masulipatam, under Ralph Cartwright,

sailed northward to Harishpur near Cuttack on the mouth of the Mahanadi,

and entered into negotiations to trade with the governor of Orissa; and

in June 1633 Cartwright founded a factory at Balasore, which proved very

unhealthy. In 1651 the English reached Hugli, which was at that time the

chief port of Bengal; about that year Gabriel Boughton, a surgeon,

obtained from the Mogul viceroy permission for the English to trade in

Bengal. In 1657 Hugli became the head agency in Bengal, with Balasore

and Cossimbazar in the Gangetic delta and Patna in Behar under its

control. In that year the name of Job Charnock, the future founder of

Calcutta, appeared in the lowest grade of the staff.

Acquisition of Bombay.

The company had long fixed an eye on Bombay. Its position half way down

the Indian seaboard gave it both strategic and commercial importance,

while it lay beyond the authority of the Moguls, and so could be

fortified without offending them. In 1626 the company joined with the

Dutch under Van Speult in attacking Bombay, but could not retain

possession. In 1661 Charles II. received Bombay from Portugal as part of

the Infanta Catherine's dowry, but effective possession was not taken

until 1665, and in 1668 Charles handed the island over to the company.

At first the loss of life, owing to the unhealthiness of the climate,

was appalling; but in spite of that fact it gradually prospered, until

it reached its present position as the second port and city of India. In

1670 Gerald Aungier fortified the island, and so became the true founder

of its prosperity. In 1674 a treaty was entered into with Sivaji. In

1682 Sir Josiah Child at home and Sir John Child in India formed a

combination, which recognized that in the struggle between the Mogul and

the Mahrattas the English must meet force with force; and in 1687 Bombay

supplanted Surat as the chief seat of the English in India.

The founding of Calcutta.